“You really thought you could stop us?” Ziegler said, sneering at her as he grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked her head around in his direction. “After you’ve been away so long? After your precious boyfriend sent you packing for desk work for years on end?”
She felt the tears blurring her eyes, and she tried to blink them back, not wanting them to see how much they were getting to her.Aaron. If they got her out of here, she would never see Aaron again, she was sure of it. Even though she had almost made the same decision herself tonight, she could clearly see now how much of a mistake it was. She couldn’t let that happen.
“You’re nothing,” Ziegler continued, jerking on her hair, clearly enjoying her distress. “And your boyfriend is going to go down for this, too. We might have left him alone if you hadn’t run crying to him.”
The tears racked her body now. She had brought this to his door again, she had made it so he couldn’t be safe. If she had just kept her distance, not been so stubborn thinking she could fix everything, it never would have gone down the way it had. She couldn’t believe she had been so foolish. She—a rookie cop who ended up riding a desk for six years—thought she could end this, when Aaron—a sergeant on the police force, a seasoned officer, and the best man she had ever known—hadn’t even been able to succeed. What did she think she would be able to do against these men?
As the fear and dread set in, all of this started to feel as though it was happening to someone else. Like she was watching herself as it happened, not in her own body. And, when she saw it like that, the anger was what rose to the top. All of this was so unfair. All she had ever wanted was to be a good cop, and they had taken that from her. They had taken her chance to live out the career she had wanted, the life she had wanted—with the man she wanted, too.
Before she could think it through, she spat at Ziegler. “You’re never going to get away with this.”
He smirked at her. “I already have,” he replied smugly.
“I know you’ve managed all this time, but that was before you let me know about it,” she continued. “You know how many people there are working on this case? Not just cops, either—former military and former CIA agents. There’s so much crap coming your way, you don’t have any idea.”
They fell silent for a moment, and Benning and Ziegler exchanged a look. Both of them actually looked…worried. Like there was something to be really afraid of. A swell of pride filled her chest as she watched them. Yeah, they should be scared. They should be downright terrified at the storm that was coming their way. They might have thought taking her out would stop it, but it was only just getting started.
And she couldn’t wait to see it rip them apart. If she was still around, that is.
But before she could continue rubbing it in, Benning pulled a gun from his holster. He pressed it against her side, and she tried to pull away from him, so then he leveled it straight at her head. She immediately froze, and time stood still. She wanted to shift away but all she could see was the black barrel looking back at her. Unflinching, unwavering.
She had never been on the other end of a gun like this. They had flashed a knife at her before, of course, but that had beendifferent. This? This was the end. One wrong move and she would be dead. Of course, some part of her had known they were going to do this eventually.
Her life flashed before her eyes as Benning wrapped his other hand around the gun. The other men were dead silent, like even they hadn’t been prepared for this to happen. The tears were gone now—she was too scared to cry. Her whole body was frozen in terror as she faced the reality of what was going to happen to her.
What had she even done with her life? All she’d ever wanted to do was be a police officer. After sitting behind a desk for six years, she had finally gotten back to where she felt like she could make a difference, and these men had taken that away from her. She had spent those years so angry at Aaron for betraying her, but she understood that he was only trying to protect her from this. This moment right here. And now that they had found each other again, she realized that he was the only man she’d ever loved.
That was what she had done with her life: She had loved him so much more than she had ever loved anyone else. Even when it had been hard, even when they had been apart all of those years, she had never stopped loving him. Being with him was what she had dreamed of since she first met him, and she was glad that she had let him know that she loved him. That was something, at least.
“You don’t speak to us like that,” Benning spat at her. She heard his voice shaking. Was he really willing to do this? Kill another cop? Maybe she wasn’t even the first. There must have been other people through the years, other people who had dared to get close to discovering their secrets. Maybe they had just killed all of them off, like they were about to do to her.
The thought of it was enough to make her sick. She would never get to see Aaron again, she would never get to apologizeto him. Maybe they had been right, maybe it would have been better if she had stayed off the case, because look at what was happening to her. She had basically led them right to him, and she wasn’t sure if they would stop after they had killed her.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered under her breath. She knew he couldn’t hear her, but it didn’t matter. She had to believe there was a way for him to know how she really felt. She had to believe she could take her leave from this life without fearing that he didn’t understand how much she cared for him. She always had, even when she had also hated him.
“You bitch,” Benning snarled.
Bailey inhaled a deep breath, bracing herself for what was about to come.
And then, the gun went off. She jumped, and waited for the blackness to hit her. She fell back into the van and squeezed herself into a ball so they couldn’t take another shot. The pain would come any second now. Where had the bullet hit? She could still feel the throbbing in her shoulder, but…
She lifted her head and looked at her body. No fresh wounds, other than the ones she’d gotten from the crash. And no bullet holes, either. She slowly sat upright. Outside, through the ringing in her ears, she heard chaos. Shouting, banging, crashing, the low, heavy sound of punches being landed. What was going on? Had they turned on each other, or…?
She slid to the edge of the van, and her eyes widened when she figured out what was actually happening. They were fighting—but not with each other, with Aaron. Aaron seemed to have already taken Ziegler and the others down, but Benning was still on his feet, holding the gun.
“Back off, Ward!” he barked at him. “If you know what’s good for you—”
But before he could get out another word, Aaron lunged at him, dropping his head and slamming it into Benning’s chest.The force of the impact knocked the gun out of his hands, sending it flying across the ground and into the tall grass. Bailey couldn’t make out what happened after that, but judging by the sounds of their struggle, it wasn’t going Benning’s way.
When she got the nerve to peer around the van, she saw Aaron getting to his feet, wiping away sweat from his brow before he turned his attention back to her.
She felt herself collapse the moment before he reached her. All the emotion, all the fear, facing down death—it all fell away the minute he wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight, as though he never wanted to let her go.
“You’re okay,” he murmured to her, his voice soft in her ear. She knew they couldn’t stay long. It was only a matter of time before the guys came to, and they needed to be as far from here as possible. But right now, all she wanted to do was press herself into his arms.
“Oh my God,” she gasped, hardly able to think straight. The sound of the gunshot was still ringing in the air around them, and it was at that moment she remembered the gun.
“Aaron, the gun,” she squeaked to him. “You need to get the gun—”
